


Memories

by sternflammenden



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Crack Pairing, F/M, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-24
Updated: 2012-12-24
Packaged: 2017-11-22 05:45:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/606444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sternflammenden/pseuds/sternflammenden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I know what it's like to be burned."</p><p>Written for the LJ asoiafkinkmeme.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memories

When he speaks of his plans for Alayne coming to fruition, Barbrey listens with a practiced smile and a polite nod of agreement. After all, she finds the thought of the inevitable to be, at the least, an amusement, one of the few that she can afford these days in her straightened circumstances. The grand reveal of Sansa Stark will set the already-collapsing North into a further tailspin, and although thoughts of scavenging through the spoils to claim what she can is appealing, it is the look of astonishment, or of shock, on the faces of her bannermen, of her cohorts, of her betters, that so pleases her. Not that she cares for these cautious masks, these subtle games of hidden meaning. Petyr never mentions the girl’s name to her, not really, but she is no fool, and her eyes are sharp enough to discern the red roots of hair that come to light at times, the shades of Catelyn Stark, her usurper, in the expressions of the child’s face.

Catelyn Stark. It is a name that Barbrey should by all rights hate, but she cannot bring herself to feel such vituperation for a dead woman. It is beneath her to feel much triumph over a corpse for after all, it is only luck of circumstance that she is not one herself. 

Petyr likes to reminisce in his bitter way when he has drank too much, goading her, she thinks, with Brandon Stark’s name, thrusting it at her like a dagger, like the sword that the man himself, he too dead, was so proud of.

_Sharp enough to shave a woman’s cunt._

And how she’d laughed. 

She didn’t laugh now. She only remembered on those nights, the way that he had taken her, the way that she in her way had taken him, nails raking down his back much the same way that her hands, now slightly crabbed from age, did to Petyr on nights when they’d both become bitter from the sour drink that flowed like blood in the Eyrie. 

These were memories so distant, so different from a boy with a red ruin on his chest, lying abed, consoled by a poor substitute.

She remembered her pride, the way that she’d imagined herself garbed in white and silver, standing in the hall for the first time as Mistress of Winterfell, Mistress of the North. She remembered the quiet pride in her father’s eyes when she’d hinted how close it was, just a breath away, _oh, if only._

Not so different from a boy from the Fingers, nameless almost, who rose high, so high that he almost fell.

She remembered the displeasure that her sister could not hide at such a union, her usual mannered features twisted in a disapproval that Barbrey just knew was jealousy.

And she didn’t think of Petyr anymore, lost in the past despite her best intentions not to be.

And she remembered the way he could not meet her eyes when he told her the truth and the cold way that she’d dismissed him, saving her tears for a locked room.

And time had passed and all that she’d loved had passed away. And what was left to her but a wooden town, an empty hall, and age, horrible age. 

But there was this, in the end. It was all that there was.

“They think they’ve done me in,” Petyr slurred, setting down the glass of Arbor gold. “And it’s been a trial by fire, but in the end, I’ll have my say. _We_ ,” he corrected, looking her in the eyes with a bleary gaze, “will have our say.”

She nodded but did not speak. She bent, brushing his lips with hers, tasting the wine, and when their embrace deepened and her teeth found purchase she tasted blood as well, the flavors mingling in her mouth.


End file.
